


Bound To You

by A26



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 1500's Europe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, American Civil War, Aztec Empire, Erwin's POV, Historical, M/M, POV First Person, Reincarnation, Romance, Sumerian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 09:43:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9715844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A26/pseuds/A26
Summary: A romantic tale of two lovers bound together throughout history.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For [Adriane](http://adrianelinerush.tumblr.com).
> 
> Happy Valentines Day!

This time I think I'm a soldier or royal guard of some sort. The sun is blazing in the light blue sky but I can't feel the heat. It's bright. I'm in some sort of large raised temple with familiar imagery in an unfamiliar language carved delicately into the walls. I am indoors somewhere and people are dressed like what seems to be royalty as they slowly make their way about the decadent halls. 

I look down at myself. I have armour plating half of my body, wrapped leather footwear and a sarong. Is this Egypt? No. It feels earlier than then. It's definitely in a desert country. I can't put a name to it. Maybe it's the Middle East? I have an ornate, heavy spear and wrists adorned with colourfully beaded protective bracers. 

A young woman in long cerulean and gold robes approaches me with a stern look on her face. She has piercing blue eyes and a pretty, dark complexion and long black braided hair adorned with jewels and beads. I know her from somewhere. It's the same nameless person I dream about every night.

I enjoy our time together. In my dreams we are endlessly drawn to each other. Wherever we are, we find each other. This time we are home in a great sandstone ziggurat, corridors gently lit by oil torches. 

“Come,” she says, taking my hand while looking around cautiously. I follow her order without hesitation and she leads me to what I understand is her bedroom within this grand palace. She is royalty. I don't know how I know this but the dream seems to provide me with all of the understanding I need. I feel an undeniable knowing that what we are doing is forbidden as she closes the delicate drapes behind us. 

“We can't be here,” I tell her. She flips a hand and dismisses me. 

“I may do as I like,” she tells me without a doubt of knowing her authority. She is the boss around here, but there will still be repercussions from the priests and even worse, the Gods. 

“What would Inanna say?” I chastise her, unsure of why I'm choosing these particular names. She clicks her tongue at me as she saunters back over, walking me back up against the wall beside the curtained entrance archway. 

“Love is love, Inanna would surely celebrate for us.” 

She always has an answer for everything. Every single time. I love that about her. Her unusual charm and wit is always the same wherever we meet.

She slinks her fingers around the handle of my spear slowly, fingertips brushing my hand and I willingly surrender it. I know I shouldn't but I can't disobey her orders. She is my Queen. I don't know if she's the queen of the lands I'm dreaming of, but it comes heavily implied with the scenery and her confident demeanour. These dreams seem to unfold more information and clarity as they progress.

She rests the spear against the wall and stretches up onto her toes to kiss me gently. I barely register the warmth of her lips through the haze of sleep. Sometimes I wish I was there in person in these fantastical, faraway places. 

“The King will-” 

A finger presses to my lips. It feels so real. 

“The King is busy, he does not know we are together,” she interrupts me, pressing close with her delicately jewelled fingers curling around the straps holding my chest piece in place. Her fingers know the straps and knots like the back of her hand and she begins undressing me. I cannot deny her. 

The rest is a blur as I wake, the warmth of her room fading into daylight that peeks through the blinds of my apartment. I lay in bed for a moment. The urge to return to my pleasant dream is not as strong as it once was when the dreams begun. I craved her company, trying desperately to fall back to sleep to meet again. 

I know we will see each other again soon. 

We always do. 

The dreams began on Christmas night when I was eleven years old. They have recurred every night since. Sometimes they are pleasant and serene, others macabre and frightening. Even when I have nightmares, she is always with me. Sometimes she is male and sometimes I am female in these dreams, but our connection remains the same regardless of gender. 

Each dream beholds wonders I can't fathom with my waking knowledge. It's deeper than any gathered mental information. It's an innate knowing that travels deeper than my bones. 

I was never a religious man, but after years of researching dreams and their meanings, I can't help but believe that I knew this person in previous lives. It's nothing like the buddhists suggest with their images and ideas of reincarnation, it feels stronger than that. 

I often wonder what this person is doing in this current life. Are they alive? How old are they? What does their life look like? Are they happy? Do they think of me? Is this all a one-sided fabrication of my own mind?

I spent years thinking they were just the creative dreams of a wild mind, but I have slowly come to accept them as a part of my life. A private, secluded part of me that is no more important to me than breathing.

This time around I am Erwin Smith and I have no idea whether the person in my dreams is real or whether I will ever meet them again, only to remember them in dreams for the rest of my life. 

I suppose we will have to wait and find out.


	2. Chapter 2

I go through my school years learning all sorts about past events and important social and economical periods in human history. Eras, Ages and human movements, everything. Thanks to my nightly visits to different parts of the globe I end up spending a lot of my spare time reading history books and researching other languages and civilisations as I grow up. 

Everything I look into always feels so familiar to me. 

I lead what society might class as an ‘ordinary’ childhood and my teenage years, despite the addition of nightly adventures in my dreams with an unnamable lover, are productive. I grow into a tall, handsome young man with dark blond hair and a tall, healthy physique. 

My father is in politics. He fully supports whatever choice it is I want to make, which until I reach the end of high school, is to become a historian. Once I have to make a choice regarding universities, the answer is given to me clearly after another one of my dreams: study law. 

I don’t know where the order comes from but I know it isn’t for myself. There are people out there in the world suffering great misjustice. What I can do for history is not in studying what has been before, but rather using what I know about the past to prevent it happening in the future. To me, that is how people rewrite history. By learning from the past and making different choices to our predecessors. 

I decide to pursue a degree in criminal psychology and law.

It’s my eighteenth year, Christmas night yet again. The dreams are always most vivid on this night and I’ve never been able to pinpoint why. I can’t name all of the places that I have been to, all of the different times - there’s either too many or sometimes I don’t recall my dreams when I wake. Thankfully Christmas night is usually a memorable one. I look forward to that more than the festive day itself. 

I fall asleep only to wake in my dreams facing a black sky full of stars. 

I feel as if I’m lying on my back, staring up at an impossibly huge sky. I turn my neck to the left and the horizon feels like it’s miles away, like I’m lying high up on some sort of platform far above ground. It’s so beautiful. I turn my head to look at myself. I am a young girl, maybe ten or twelve, dressed in light coloured robes from head to toe, in fact sitting on a large block of light stone. I can see the ground before my feet and I’m not actually far from it at all. 

I have long black hair tied loosely over one shoulder and the evening feels so still with every constellation staring back at me as if I personally belong to the universe. No, wait, it’s actually morning. It’s just before sunrise when all of the world is asleep and the stars are slowly losing their brightness to the immense shine of an equatorial sun. 

I look to my right. There is a boy beside me, dressed similarly with a sash tied around his waist. Our hands are intertwined and I feel at home. There is no desire to touch any more than I am now for this moment feels intimate enough already. There are no words spoken between us and I briefly wonder if this boy beside me is dreaming of the same moment in his current life if he is indeed real. 

Tonight he tells me about the constellations. Points to stars and tells me their great stories. The dream cuts to the daytime. It’s bright out and we’re both running together. I can hear my mother - who looks just as she does in the present - she’s yelling for us to slow down but we just laugh and run faster. 

We head into a great stone pyramid and I realise we are at Giza, Egypt. I’m not sure what it is my dream is showing me, my logical mind often overriding a lot of what I see in dreams as imaginary or impossible. We run into the entrance of the pyramid and it’s nothing like I imagined it would ever be inside. The corridors are gently lit by torches and I chase the young boy down familiar hallways until we reach a room full of other people. 

We’re late but we giggle together anyway. 

The man and woman at the opposite side beckon us to the front where we sit with the other children in front of all of the adults. It’s important to let us get a good view, unless we want to sit with our parents - which we never do. 

This is where we come as a family to learn. They teach us about the stars and pass down knowledge and tales of our ancestors and tell us how the world works. It’s magical and extraordinary and it's a shame I don’t remember any of the details when I wake up. All I know is that I was in the pyramids with a young boy with those familiar piercing blue eyes. In all the dreams I’ve ever had, gazing into this person’s eyes, I’ve never found a single speck of green or brown or grey. They are the bluest eyes I have ever seen. Probably because they aren’t real, I tell myself often.

Once I wake I feel like I’ve spent years under the pyramids in those ancient rooms designed to teach and evolve humanity. It’s an incredible sensation but alas I have school work to tend to. 

The Christmas holidays aren’t very vacation-like when you’re studying my chosen degree.


	3. Chapter 3

The following Christmas night we meet in the woods on a frozen winter afternoon. I don't know the details but it's very clear we are on opposite sides of a war. His uniform is different to mine and there is an indefinite feeling of a tear between the two of us. 

This particular dream is like watching one of those dramatic true story movies about one of the great wars of the world. The ones where these ordinary people go through such incredible hardships and still may not even end up together, but somehow do. This dream seems to be earlier than the world wars, the man’s gun and flat cap reminding me of what I've ever learnt of the American Civil War. 

I feel the dread building as I dream on, subconsciously praying that this doesn't turn into a nightmare. He tells me his name, it's different every time he tells it to me. I don't remember the name this time. We stagger through the woods and it's quiet. I turn to look behind us and there is a trail of red blood spots in the snow. 

Since this is a dream I can't register if the pain is my own or if it's him. I look to my left only to find my arm in tatters of torn muscle and sinew. I know now, it was a cannon shell. Blew my arm clean off when we were fighting a losing battle. I retreated into the woods and a deserter from the opposition’s side found me. 

He leads me to a small cabin and lays me down, tending to my wound. I feel like I ought to feel tired or in pain but it doesn't register. His attention on me is calm and collected and it helps to soothe me. His eyes are their usual pure shade of blue and suddenly the severity of the injury doesn't seem so grand. 

That's all I remember of that night’s dream. 

University is going well. I have no interest in dating anyone. The guys think I'm a nerd with no chances of pulling and the girls all think I'm gay because I don't return any of their advances. 

Regardless of what happens at night that I never share with the world, life goes on. I have a top spot in a top college in the world and the next few years are tough. It is all ultimately worth it of course when I come out the other end with a degree and a job lined up in an attorney's office. 

I spend the next six years working there, honing my skills and learning the law in a practical setting. 

For the first time in nineteen years since the dreams started on Christmas night, I do not dream of my companion. I wake up with an incredible sense of loss, unable to fathom just why I feel like this. It has come to be such a normal part of my life so now I'm not sure how to place the feeling of its absence. 

Is this how it feels to lose a limb? 

I see them again only briefly the following few nights. They aren't gone completely. I can never figure out whether it's my own circumstances that affect my dreams. Nothing terrible has happened recently. Nothing out of the ordinary. I won a case at work but that's nothing new. 

The next few months of disturbed and fragmented dreams continues for the next year before becoming a little bit more consistent. 

It's far more erratic than it used to be but at least we still meet. 

I can't sleep following waking from a bad dream. We were cathars fleeing persecution from the Catholic Church. Our families were killed before our eyes. I get up eventually and make my way through to the study in the dead of night. The blinds are open and the dark starry sky reminds me of Giza, even though I've never been to Egypt.

I am drawn to one of my many books on English history, flicking through more for the pictures than anything else. 

My hand stops on a page. Sometimes I get drawn to pages or sections of books, like some sort of force is guiding me there for a message I need to read. The image is of a woman in the gallows. 

‘Wrongly accused but hung anyway’, the book describes to my horror. 

In that moment I get another clear message. I need to move from the courtroom and keeping people out of prison, to actually looking at the people _inside_ prison.


	4. Chapter 4

The colours are vibrant and there are people crowding the busy market streets below. I watch from a balcony. My hands are dark skinned and it feels like a hot country. I've been here before. 

I turn around and the interiors are luscious and expensive. Rich chocolate linens and jade decorations, woven baskets holding exotic fruit like pineapples and papaya and small bread loaves. My father and mother are here in this dream, donning belted skirts and their chests covered with jade jewellery. Their faces are painted with foreign dotted markings and patterns with bold piercings through their noses and ears. 

My mother comes to me and leads a young boy into our home, her grip on his arm firm until she lets him go in front of me. He's bruised and thin and his eyes are locked on the floor. 

“He doesn't look at me,” I complain to mother, who takes the boy’s head in her hands and forces him to look up. He's got blue eyes as usual and looks scared. Probably taken from his home in the jungles around the city I’m in and sold off to the highest bid. They sell women and children for work or household pets and the men are taken to the temples as gifts to the Gods. 

The boy looks at me, still terrified but with a glimmer of recognition. 

“He is for you. A companion until the Gods give you a brother or a sister.” 

My parents leave us alone together. 

“What is your name?” I ask him. 

“Tlilpotonqui,” he tells me quietly. 

“You look like a little black crow,” I tell him with a laugh. He flinches. “I will give you a new name,” I insist. “How about Ihuicatl? Your eyes are as blue as the sky,” I say with a smile. He shrugs a little and nods. 

“My name is Achcauhtli,” I tell him. It’s a strong name for a leader. It’s what I want to do when I grow up. My father is King so one day I will inherit his place before our people atop the temple. 

“Hello,” he greets me as I take his features in. He looks like a scruffy little jungle boy and I can feel a vague sense of sympathy for him. 

He slowly warms up to me and my family, the city and its bustle. He tells me sometimes that he misses home and doesn’t ever say he wants to go back which is a surprise. I ask him sometimes but he just shrugs before saying ‘this is my home now’. My father must have told him not to complain. 

We get him clothes to match mine and I keep him by my side for years to follow. We do everything together. We eat, play and travel around the city together. The commoners can’t touch us because of what I wear, the green beads around my neck informing them I am of royal blood and thus touched by the heavens and the Gods as their human counterparts here on Earth. 

By association, no one touches him. He is the Prince’s Sky and my best friend. 

My best friend whom I can barely remember when my eyes open once more. 

I have moved to America to make better use of my skills as a lawyer specialising in dead and archived cases. Cases that were never fully investigated or resolved, cases that were too tricky or sensitive to deal with at the time. Cases where the people serving these sentences may or may not be in a questionable circumstance. 

The current case I’m about to be working on is revealing itself to be quite interesting. 

Witnesses going missing, accounts and evidence being tampered with leaving little clues as to the actual truth of the matter. I am meeting with the inmate in a few weeks. He's being held down state. My peers and colleagues all tell me I’m wasting my time on cases like these. I haven’t lost a case yet. Only one instance was the person actually more guilty than they were accused for, in which case the correct sentencing was applied. 

In every other case I have proven that my client was wrongly accused or wrongly sentenced. I have an impressive track record of getting sentences reduced or charges cleared after years of imprisonment. It’s rare I get letters for these inmates apologising but at least I am able to grant them the freedom they are sorely owed. 

Nothing makes me more angry than such devastating cases of misjustice and it gives my life purpose knowing I am correcting failures of a corrupt system, twisting it around on itself and righting wrongs done to innocent people due to the oversight and negligence of those in positions of alleged power and trust. 

Years of prison time sobers a man. They have time and lots of it. They spend a lot of that time thinking. Regretting. Hoping for the future. A lot of them unfortunately feel too much turmoil to correctly get themselves back up on their own two feet and the system they are churned through doesn’t give them the necessary helping hand they need. They aren’t supported to come out to stay out and unfortunately a lot of prisons are a way of earning money. Prisons are filled to capacity and that is how the private companies running them make their income. 

It’s disgusting. 

The only thing that offers me comfort during my gruelling work is my nightly visits by my best friend, lover, sibling, spouse, colleague, boss, you name it. We’ve been everything together. Everywhere, too. Together we are one if only in my dreams. Hopefully my next case will prove to be just as satisfying as most of my dreams.


	5. Chapter 5

“Get the ink ready, we need these all done by tomorrow!” There's a man in a long apron ordering around a grubby workshop full of just as dirty people. Under closer inspection I see they are printing newspapers in some sort of European language. Possibly German, Italian. I don't remember when I wake. Hundreds are already done, folded and bound tightly with twine, sitting along the stone wall by the entrance awaiting collection. 

I can’t tell what the time frame or the country is by the insides of the shop, my attention drawn to the business and the sense of urgency that saturates the entire room. The guy from earlier barking orders approaches me and suddenly I’m involved. 

“You going to sit there and stare or actually do some work?” He scolds me. The next thing I find I’m spending most of tonight’s dream handling huge sheets of paper, feeding them through an impressive printing press. It doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen in modern times. This must be one of the earlier designs. 

The dream guides me out through the building to a dark, cobbled street lit only by lanterns and oil street lamps. There is a large carriage by the door and men load the stacks of printed papers onto the backs, the boss possibly bartering with the driver and quarrelling over money. 

I can tell the short tempered, stressed man ordering everyone around is the same person from all of my other dreams, but it seems tonight we are colleagues and he doesn’t approach me unless he has direction to give or mistakes to point out. He runs a tight ship, wherever it is we are. 

The entire night is spent working the presses and when I wake it feels like a relatively short dream, despite knowing I was there for hours. I pick up a number of details from the seemingly short amount of time though. He treats me as an equal unlike the other workers. We are more like business partners than manager and subordinate. 

He has a constant scowl on his face but there’s warmth in his seemingly cold eyes that seem to soften whenever he speaks to me or swears at me for messing something up. There’s a patience there that isn’t present with the way he interacts with the others. 

It wasn’t anything spectacular to wake up to, but at least it wasn’t one of our nightmares. I am meeting with a few people to go over the case details of my new client today. He’s not had any luck with appeals and parole hearings and I want to know why. 

Einstein said it was very important to never stop asking questions, so that’s exactly what I plan to do as I dissect every millimetre of his case notes. 

What I’m not expecting is to be given a folder thinner than your average restaurant menu. 

“Is that it?” I ask in disbelief. 

“Yeah, we don’t know where the rest went,” the cop at the archive entrance listlessly informs me.

“Do you keep a record of who books things in and out?” 

“We do,” he says. 

“Would you mind looking it up for me?” 

He looks at his computer and taps away for a few minutes before shrugging. “Says nothing was booked out or in after that. The guy confessed, there wasn’t much of an investigation after that.” 

I refrain from pulling a face and take the file. I’ll have to work with what I’m given and muster up some additional resources. That’ll require a little bit of investigating on my part. 

This is gonna be a tough one. 

I get myself back to my office after meeting with all the right people to get the basics. My assistant has pulled together some notes from other sources as well and thankfully I’m not alone in this mission. I have a dedicated and elite team now, having been doing this for the last several years. 

I trawl for hours through what seems like the same eight sheets of paper. 

Name: Levi Ackerman. 

Member of the family belonging to a major drug gang leader who was shot dead. The reports have it listed that Levi was the new leader, taking after his relative, but all accounts I research regarding the family claim the son was estranged from the drug business and the family involved with it. 

His school records say he was a straight-A student. He was lined up for a scholarship before he was arrested when he was nineteen for the alleged murder of his uncle and for possession of class A and B narcotics with intention of supplying. That’s a tough sentence. He was lucky to get a thirty year sentence if he were guilty. 

The more I look into it though, the more I find. 

I am denied access to Levi repeatedly. We haven’t even spoken over the phone. I’m not sure if he is aware someone is investigating his case again. The system is throwing every possible loop at me to run through and unfortunately I’m having to jump through every single one only to get what feels like nowhere. 

I take two steps forward and end up three steps behind where I started. 

Police reports lead to witness reports which lead to phone calls to people who can’t remember what happened fifteen years ago which leads to investigations into the police department which originally arrested him. 

This is where things get interesting. 

The investigation has taken months. It’s almost been a year and I’ve still not met him thanks to apparent delays in getting the appropriate paperwork and clearance to add me to his visitor’s list. If I wasn’t a renowned lawyer known for cracking these sorts of cases I’d have had my name on that list within 24 hours. The project has drawn the attention of the media in a big way. 

I unearth a disturbing fact that will win me this case if I can just find a few more shreds of proof and actually have a proper discussion with my client. If I can do that I firmly believe I can solidify this case for good.

I’m so close I can taste it, but alas, after yet another long day, I need to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

There are so many dreams and nightmares where I don’t know where I am. The focus is so often my mysterious partner in crime that I fail to remember a lot of details if I don’t write them down before forgetting. Needless to say I own a lot of sleep journals from before jotting things in your phone was a good way of logging things. 

I keep them with my books in the study since there are so many. I made a habit of it when I was a teenager and I’ve had years to practice. I still keep books by the bedside table. I like the feeling of having everything documented and physical. I shall have to write a book about my travels some time when I find the hours in the days. 

I find myself dreaming tonight about my current case with Levi in the place of my usual lover, which is understandable given how hard I’ve been working lately. It wakes me up with a renewed vigor to push for the clearance I need to meet Levi. 

I wake to an email three days later confirming it has been granted. 

They listened. 

I call the prison and immediately schedule myself in for a meeting. As I am his legal representative I do not have to strictly abide by visitors hours. I manage to arrange a time the same day. I’m not wasting another moment of mine and especially Levi’s precious time. I want that man out of prison if I can help it. I firmly believe that he was interrogated and possibly coerced into confessing to a crime he didn't commit.

I need to speak with him to confirm it for sure. He is the best person to get information from. He alone is probably the best person to chase the full truth. 

Thankfully we do not have a police interrogation room with mirrors and cameras, but a simple stone walled room painted light blue at the end of a hallway. I arrive first and take my seat after being led through security and shown the way. The door clanks open shortly afterward and I hear a shuffle as the guard deposits my client in the room and closes the door behind him. 

I’ve seen pictures of him so I’m completely aware that this is the correct person before me, but something feels off. He’s very calm and barely holds much of a defensive or protective aura as is usual in a lot of prisoners. I gesture for him to take a seat and he does so without a word. He’s seen a lot of lawyers promising him early release and a positive parole hearing. Every time it has been denied. 

“Hello, my name is Erwin Smith. I have been hoping to meet you for quite some time now,” I tell him with a smile on my face. His face is completely neutral but the moment his eyes flick up to meet mine I notice the slightest twitch in his stony expression. The colour of his eyes remind me of that of one of those beautiful husky dogs. Icy blue and so perfectly... clear… 

The penny drops. 

This man reminds me of the person from my dreams. How uncanny, I tell myself, disbelieving the possibility that the person is physically existent. For years I have been telling myself it is impossible, so I need for this to be nothing more than a funny coincidence. 

“Why are you here?” He asks. It's clear despite my efforts that he is still yet to trust me. 

“I have been re-investigating your case with my team of lawyers. I believe you may have been forced into confession.” He narrows his eyes at me, listening. When he doesn't say anything I continue. 

“You’d never had any run ins with the law before getting arrested and none of the evidence points to you, but you took the punishment without a word of complaint. I wanted to check with you personally to confirm, just between the two of us, whether you were blackmailed into complying by this man-” I show him the image of the police officer who supposedly extracted the confession. Levi glares at it as if the image personally offends him. 

He listens patiently whilst I go through all of my case notes with him, explaining things and he occasionally nods along and even agrees to a few testimonies. He tells me he took the prison time for fear of his family’s lives. I make a note of their names. I will have to check into all of this additional information when I’m back to the office. 

“So you'll let me help you?” I ask him once we’re done. He stares at the table and I can’t help but be reminded of every time my dreamt lover would stare down in the same way, averting their gaze while they thought. His stare is intense and his eyes are such a crisp sky blue that I still can’t quite get over it. 

“Yeah, I will,” he says, brows furrowing and dissecting the look on my face. “What are you looking at?” 

“You just remind me of someone,” I admit. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” Levi says. I have to think but can’t recall which one I hadn’t answered. 

“Which-” 

“Why are _you_ here?” I’m confused. I told him why I was here. We just spent the last hour going over the outline of his next meeting with the court. He leans forward in his seat a little and stares at me, studying me a little closer. “Who _are_ you?”

What does he mean? I’ve told him my credentials and explained clearly what I do. I look him in the eye once more and it’s like everything falls into place. Thousands of lifetimes are suddenly in the room with us, the clarity shocking my senses. I’m left sat at the table with a surprised expression and a full-body feeling of elated shock. 

“Holy shit,” Levi says, looking equally surprised. 

“You’re real,” I tell him. 

“No shit!”


	7. Chapter 7

We just stare at each other for what feels like hours. I recognise that flash of interest in those beautiful blue eyes. I’ve seen them thousands of times over thousands of years, thousands of lifetimes in countless dreams. 

I have journals lining my study library shelves detailing this man’s beauty and charm. Detailing all of the adventures and mishaps, trials and tribulations we’ve shared and faced together. I have a specific book for wet dreams and it shames me slightly to be thinking of it whilst opposite my client in the prison’s private consultation room. 

Suddenly the walls surrounding us both feel irrelevant. Nothing can be a barrier if it involves having Levi in my life this time around. There’s been so many years leading us up into exactly this point. If the corruption hadn’t been there to imprison Levi, we’d have never met. Everything apparently happens for a reason and I’m blown away by the revelation before me.

Looks like Levi is just as blown away. His jaw is hung open slightly and he’s just staring at me. I swallow around a dry tongue and Levi’s eyes watch the movement on my neck. 

“When’s the soonest you can get me out of here?” he asks me straight up. 

“We’ve got a meeting planned with the judge in one month’s time. I will need to visit you a few more times in order to gather some more information and statements from you. In between I will be working to contact your relatives and find statements from them too.” 

“But they were placed into witness protection,” Levi questions. 

“Anything is possible,” I tell him with a smile, unable to hide my excitement. “For now we will work together in getting you free, but until the next time-” 

“Guess I’ll see you tonight,” Levi interrupts me, making me smile wider than I can remember ever smiling. 

“You have the dreams too?” 

“For thirty-four years,” he tells me. That’s as long as I have been having them. 

“Your birthday,” I say quietly, half to myself. He looks confused. Why had I never pieced the information together before this? “Mine started when you were born,” I tell him. I know his birthday since it’s on his files, but I’d never put two and two together until now. He cracks a slight smile. It’s obvious he’s spent a lot of this lifetime having no reason to smile except perhaps in his sleep. 

“Interesting.” 

“Indeed. Until next time, I’ll see you at night..” I say quietly, lingering at the table a moment longer to just stare at him and take his features in. He looks tired although prison time will do that to a person. He has a strange sense of calm about him and a firm steadiness that is always there in my dreams. He’s not what I would call classically handsome but he’s still good looking in his own way. His files didn’t have much information on his father so he could be of any descent. I do find him attractive, though. 

But then again, how much of that attraction is based on how well we know each other? I’ve loved this man no matter what he looked like or how well we’ve known each other in each life. We’ve always collided in one way or another and I feel so elated and happy that it has happened again, for real. He is real. I still can’t quite believe it. 

He has to wave at me to get my attention back. I laugh a little and he gives me a soft half-smile. Even the way his smile is a little crooked has my heart warming in my chest. 

I haven’t even left the room and I miss him already. 

I make sure he has my details before I bid him a final two more farewells and I make my way back to the office. It’s hard to focus for a lot of the day, but as soon as I crack back into my work mode everything goes ten times faster than usual. 

This is a very special client after all. 

This is Levi. My Levi. He needs my help so I intend on doing him good by my word and getting him his freedom. 

Come night time I find myself far too excited to sleep. A quick walk and a mug of chamomile tea helps with that though and eventually I nod off. 

When I wake up I am grossly disappointed to realise that I don’t remember dreaming at all. 

Nothing. 

Maybe the dreams were all there in order for us to meet again? It was after all what set me out onto my destined path, guiding me toward studying history and then law and then onward to prison work. It soothes me to an extent knowing that Levi is alive and well, but it’s not like I can just pick up a phone and hear his voice. 

It feels awful not seeing him in my dreams when I know he’s so close to his freedom that I can practically taste it. It’s so feasibly within reach and a month doesn’t pass soon enough. We meet at the prison a few more times but all of that time is reserved solely for work. We make a promise to catch up as soon as Levi is out. He doesn’t like the idea of me getting close to him when we’re in such positions. We both agree on focusing. 

The hearing arrives and I present my case before the judge who takes a few days to deliberate and work out all of the evidence presented to her. 

The press go wild with sensation. I start receiving job offers. The messages are endless. News coverage of my career and Levi’s misfortunes and even movies are discussed. I tell them all to wait until the trial is concluded. They tell me I’m confident, and I am. 

They call it one of the worst cases of misjustice in modern years. I have successfully shed light on police corruption and disgraced an entire department with the mere truth. 

Years of cover-ups and botched files. Evidence tampered with. Witnesses coerced by dirty cops working for the drug gang. Levi was tortured into confession for fear of repercussions from dangerous people in high up places. 

All of whom are now subject to fresh investigation and a national uproar. 

After months of personal efforts on my behalf and fifteen long years in prison, the judge rules Levi is innocent. 

He is released immediately. 

He is mine again, and I am his.


	8. Chapter 8

Since the day I met Levi in person, neither of us have had a single dream about the other from another time. 

I meet him at the prison when he is released only hours after the hearing and he comes out dressed in presumably his old clothes from when he was nineteen. He looks a little bit out of place and vulnerable, so I make sure to wrap an arm around his shoulder as we walk out to the car. It’s summer and it’s warm outside and he doesn’t look back at the prison as he gets into my car and I take him home with me. 

“I hope you’re okay staying with me,” I tell him, already having a sense for the answer before I finish speaking. 

“It’s fine. It’s not like I have anywhere else,” he tells me. I turn quiet as I consider his circumstances, focusing on the roads as I make the turns down the necessary roads to avoid traffic. It must be tough, coming out of prison without anyone aside from a man you just met whom you’ve been dreaming about your whole life. “Besides,” he adds, “I have you. You’re all I need.” 

I don’t see Levi as an ex-con. Sure, he was convicted and yes he spent time in prison, but I don’t see him as any less than I ever have. If anything I love him even more considering everything he’s been through for us to get to where we are today. 

He takes in the surroundings as we drive through the neighbourhood, nearing my apartment. 

“Where were you born?” Levi asks me. 

“Sydney,” I tell him. I know most of Levi’s history having been through his case notes and drawing out as much from him for the trial. It must be comforting to talk about someone beside himself, so I let him ask the questions. 

“When did you move to the U.S?” He asks and I tell him. He seems to have a lot of questions and he asks and asks until we reach the front door. 

I show him the apartment and he nods as he is shown everything. I briefly touch on when to take the trash out and where the towels are, small things like that. I offer him a cup of tea and he accepts, joining me on the sofa and humming with long overdue satisfaction. 

“I don't suppose the tea was very good in there?” I ask.

“It was pretty shit. This is good.” 

“It's from England. I went this year to meet with one of the witnesses. She moved all the way to London.” 

“Damn, you don't miss a beat do you?” I just smile at that. It's true though. I'm extraordinarily thorough. 

Once we finish our teas and set the mugs down on the table, we hit a quiet moment. It's not by any means awkward, just taking in one another’s presence and really letting it sink in. He's just staring at me with a childlike look of wonder, those light sky blue eyes the brightest I've ever seen them. My dreams don't do him justice. 

Levi scoots closer and wraps his arms around me, pressing his face against my chest as I move to accommodate. “Thank you,” he says softly as I return his hug. He seems thin by looking at him but I can feel the distinct firmness of muscle beneath his sweater. 

“What will you do now?” I ask him once we part. Neither of us move away though. We’ve waited too long to be in each other's company again. Levi shrugs before a playful little smirk tugs at his lips. 

“Probably you?” He says with a wink that I've seen so many times, leaning closer and licking his lips. How can I deny him? I press forward and finally seal the gap, lips pressing together for what feels like the millionth time. It feels no less special than all the times before. 

“I’d love that.” 

“Damn straight you will,” he says as he straddles my lap. 

The first night we sleep beside one another we both share the same dreams once more, wrapped in each other's arms throughout time. 

We found each other in this lifetime and I don't doubt we’ll be together in however many lives are to come. 

For we are bound together... and always will be.


End file.
